Everything and its opposite has been said about this new ruling of the ECHR. In this post, I’m trying to expose with a cold head what exactly was said by the court and what the scope of the ruling is. But yes, I’ll allow myself to express an opinion in the conclusion...

The Spanish Inquisition, I mean. Then again who does?

Recently Ambrose pointed me to one of his posts in response to a snarky comment I made about the Inquisition on Twitter. His summary goes like this: "The Inquisition was a good thing for its time. You don't even have to be Catholic to think so, if you'll just look into the facts and how it was a civilizing and taming influence in otherwise extremely brutal times."

The argument is that the Inquisition wasn't doing the torturing and killing themselves, but rather that their role was to determine who was "innocent" and who was "guilty" and then hand them over to the competent authorities who would then proceed with the torturing and killing (which they were fully aware of). Of course, the crime these people were "guilty" of was to believe differently or to not believe at all.